In America’s Emmy Award nominations, which have been published today, Downton Abbey is still going strong. Hugh Bonneville and Michelle Dockery are nominated in the leading actor and actress categories respectively, and it's also one of five programmes voted for the Outstanding Drama category – despite the show having been entirely absent from this year’s Bafta TV award nominations. Hollywood, it seems, is populated by better judges of British television than you’ll find in Piccadilly.

The Bafta TV awards are always surrounded by whispers of snobbery, and this year’s line-up of winners was indeed a bit odd. Channel 4’s Paralympic coverage triumphed over the BBC’s Olympics – which, despite C4 putting in a great performance, simply did not reflect the scale of the BBC’s achievement.

And ITV’s Exposure programme on Jimmy Savile – which changed the national conversation, unmasked one of the country’s worst ever sex offenders, and ultimately claimed the scalp of the BBC director-general – lost out in the current affairs category to a much less well-known This World edition about the Catholic church.

It would, of course, be a great shame if any snobbery were at work in Bafta’s snubbing of Downton Abbey this year. Though the show’s second and third series were nowhere near as good as its first, it remains one of the classiest dramas on British TV. Bonneville and Dockery certainly deserve to be recognised, as these new Emmy nominations show. And at least one of the actual Bafta nominations for best drama series – BBC One’s Ripper Street – wasn’t really much good.

Of course, Downton Abbey is popular in the US – even among TV snobs – for the precise reason that it is so very British. That characteristic in and of itself is unlikely ever to get a show nominated for a Bafta, but it does help to highlight what British TV is good at – and what it isn’t.

TV commissioning in the US is always several years ahead of how it’s working in this country, and this year’s Emmy nominations starkly illustrate that fact. Online-only video provider Netflix has picked up nine nods for its remake of House of Cards, including a nomination for best drama series. Meanwhile, the traditional broadcast networks didn’t pick up a single nomination between them in that category.

Back in the UK, online providers and pay-TV channels aren’t going to usurp the BBC and ITV’s dominance in drama commissioning any time soon. Which is all the more reason that Bafta should celebrate the persistently successful shows – like ITV’s Downton Abbey – that are Britain’s best.